Notes from the Oval #3

Will O’Rourke – handle with care, PLUS: A quick stock take, and will he stay or will he go?

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NZ 347 & 453 (Williamson 156, Young 60, Mitchell 60; Bethell 3-72); England 143 & 234 (Bethell 76, Root 54; Santner 4-85).

NZ won by 423 runs.

Three things from a foot-on-the-plane kind of day.

1. Can’t beat pace like fire.

The last day-and-a-half of this test series was a little unedifying. England bowled and fielded like they were trying to stow their overhead luggage on the Airbus at the same time, and New Zealand found themselves with far more time than they knew what to do with. What resulted yesterday was one team going through the motions, waiting for a declaration they had no right to expect, and the other who kept sending players out to swing away, long after the fourth-innings target had become nominal.

There were all sorts of statistical quirks, including this being New Zealand’s joint-highest victory by runs, and the Black Caps became the first team to win a test by more than 300 runs after losing the previous one in the same series by more than 300.

When New Zealand took two quick wickets in fading light last night, effectively three with the hamstring injury to Ben Stokes, it reduced day four to exhibition status and England were in no mood to draw it out.

While the way they batted in this test, particularly the fourth innings, didn’t reflect well on them, when you’re 2-0 up and have endured a crazy-full calendar year, including 17 tests, you’re probably past the point of caring what others think.

The watching public still needed something to move the needle, however. Step forward Will O’Rourke who, in a withering eight-over spell, highlighted the limitations of statistics.

In years to come, you could look at this innings and say, “Yeah, 1 for 37, what’s so special about that.” You could say the same about the series as a whole, where O’Rourke took 10 wickets at an unflattering cost of 38.8 with a leaky economy rate of close to five and wonder what the fuss was about.

In this case, it’s numbers schmumbers.

O’Rourke was quick, tilting the speed gun into the rarefied air of the mid-150s.

He was skillful. He was hostile. He was dangerous. He was all this while still looking a bit gee-whiz-aw-shucks about the whole enterprise: a throat-seeking assassin in a choirboy’s surplice.

Watching his battle with Jacob Bethell, a prodigious talent himself, was gripping. The Bajan-born Englishman did enough to survive and, when O’Rourke was tiring at the end of spell, thrive, but he will now have the smell of Kookaburra leather seared into his senses.

It was a visceral experience watching O’Rourke. It was also an experience Harry Brook was not that interested in, charging and wiping at one before he fended one off his chin into the hands of first slip. Brook scored 350 runs in the series, second only to Kane Williamson, but he didn’t want a bar of O’Rourke.

The prospect of a three-pronged pace attack led by Matt Henry, with Kyle Jamieson and O’Rourke taking turns to make life awkward, should fill Black Caps’ fans with great hope, but fast bowling is hard. It’s especially hard when you’re tall, lean and are too young or inexperienced to know when enough is enough.

O’Rourke must be handled with extreme care.

Oh, and as an aside, can we cut the nightwatcher nonsense with him once and for all.